Conversion of hearts: Respect Life Mass reminds faithful to pray for all sinners, protect the children of God
Hannah Workman and her daughter Elisabelle Workman attended the annual Respect Life Mass at St. Patrick Cathedral on January 23, 2025. (NTC/Juan Guajardo)
FORT WORTH — In Matthew 18:1, the disciples ask Jesus: Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
Within her mother’s embrace, 10-month-old Elisabelle Workman cooed her response to the Gospel during the Jan. 23 Respect Life Mass held at St. Patrick Cathedral. Her hearty assent echoed through the sanctuary as the reader continued, “He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, ‘Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.’”
The infant’s eager participation carried through to Bishop Michael Olson’s homily for the Mass. The celebrant stressed to approximately 150 faithful that “the Lord has spoken our name in our mother’s womb,” calling them to Himself.
The Respect Life Mass, the bishop said, was initially introduced to pray for the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the legal protection for the unborn but is now most needed as an opportunity to pray for the conversion of hearts. “For we know that it is not the change in a president, the change in justices or courts, the change in laws that brings about peace — peace that can only come from Christ,” he said. “But it is our conversion of heart.”
‘The gift of life’
Bishop Olson explained how Jesus, by uniting His identity to that of a child placed in the position of prominence, demonstrated that “the logic of the kingdom of God is inverted from the logic of this fallen world, that the powerful are not the most important.”
The baptized, he said, are called to follow Christ as disciples and serve the “most dependent and marginal in society, most clearly the unborn” with His gift of peace to uphold “the tranquility of order instituted by God’s design.”
True peace, Bishop Olson urged, is only achieved through a conversion of heart, which is accomplished with an honest acknowledgment of one’s sins and an understanding that only the mercy and the grace of God “can deliver us from such hateful evils as abortion, the fundamental destroyer of peace in the world.”
Putting into practice God’s call that we love our enemies and persecutors, the bishop asked for the faithful to pray for the repose of the soul of Cecile Richards, a former president of Planned Parenthood and advocate of abortion, the primary cause of death in the world. “Christ died for her too; He desires her salvation. … For the love of God as faithful Catholics, I ask us not to deny Christ one of the souls for whom He came to save at the cost of His own love.”
“In doing so,” he continued, “we do so out of solidarity and gratitude for the gift of life. … For the gift of His mercy.”
‘Be a light’
After the Mass, Santiaga Willoughby shared with the North Texas Catholic the special intention that brought her and her husband to the Thursday evening Mass from their home in Grapevine. “Our son’s girlfriend was pregnant, but her family didn’t want the child and aborted our grandbaby.”
The St. Francis of Assisi parishioner recalled how she became a pro-life advocate back in 1979. She had just turned 13 years old and was living in Colorado when she and her classmates were asked to attend a special presentation hosted by Planned Parenthood in her high school auditorium.
“This lady came in and tried to convince all of us that [a fetus] was just flesh, it wasn’t a human being,” Willoughby said. “I remember everybody stood up in that auditorium and walked out because we said, ‘No — that’s a life.’ And we thought that was the end of it.”
But as time passed, Willoughby saw how the organization began to change minds, first with claims that they were allied with Christians and that they were helping the poor and underprivileged by providing free healthcare; then, insisting that they were alleviating irregular menstruation cycles with birth control pills; later, changing the rhetoric by asserting that abortion wasn’t murder, but the disposal of tissue, and claiming that this was all a women’s rights issue.
Willoughby, who has staunchly remained a pro-life advocate since she left that auditorium, said that she hopes more Catholics will educate themselves beyond listening to “what the world thinks. It’s how the bishop says we need to stand apart; we need to be a light in a world that is in darkness.”
‘We don’t know’
At the reception following the Mass, baby Elisabelle’s mother, Hannah Workman, reflected on the bishop’s homily.
“What stood out to me was the point that Bishop Olson made about the women and their choices, that we can’t avoid that God still loves them and that we should pray for them,” the parishioner of Arlington’s St. Mary the Virgin Church said. “You know, He died on the cross for this person as well. [We can’t ignore them because] we don’t know their heart.”
Across the table from the young mother, Deacon Steve Dixon and his wife Cheryl of Holy Redeemer Parish in Aledo shared their admiration for Bishop’s prayer for those on the other side, saying that the reminder would stay with them.
“Of course, we should always be praying prior to death for conversion,” Cheryl said. “But we don’t know the ways of God.”
The Book of the Innocents, which includes the names of babies who were aborted, during the Respect Life Mass at St. Patrick Cathedral on January 23, 2025. (NTC/Juan Guajardo)